We’ve got a golden opportunity in OpenSolaris to call a distribution “OpenSolaris” to simplify the conversation above and to get more people using our OS and we don’t appear to be going for it.

Worse yet, we’ve got a bunch of nerds (I mean that in a nice way) telling a bunch of people in Marketing how to do their jobs, that they know best for the OpenSolaris brand, and that the marketing folks haven’t a clue.

At best this is misguided, at worst, it’s disrespectful. If someone in Marketing was to come up to me to tell me how to test Solaris (my current day job) I’d likely tell them where to stick it.

I believe that at least having a go at a distribution called “OpenSolaris” and seeing what the uptake of it is from people who don’t currently use it is a worthwhile experiment, and as I said on the lists last night, if it doesn’t bring us the volume that OpenSolaris technically deserves, then we can try another tack. If you don’t like the idea, at least give me the chance to be proven wrong.

We have people experienced in software marketing who are telling us that this is absolutely the right thing to do, and we’re not only not listening to their advice, but also deriding them along the way, and that makes me sad. In short – I just don’t get it either.

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14 thoughts on “Brand”

Tim.
It was never about the brand, you know that.
It was about how it was imposed on the community.
If it went to vote, it would likely pass, but then at least the community would feel as if they were consulted and not treated like subjects to impose decisions upon.

Right John, I get that it wasn’t introduced well (understatement of the year?) but now that the idea’s out there, I think we should run with it and see what happens, rather than shouting "it’ll never work" from the sidelines.

While there are some people shouting "it’ll never work", the majority of us just want Sun to follow through on what their statement actually said.
It said this was a community decision, and it wasn’t. So let’s make it one.
I don’t think that’s too much to ask for, is it?

Except that the marketing people DON’T GET IT. These are the same folks who went around re-branding all of Sun’s product line as "Java" even though most of the products weren’t written in or even used Java. Probably the same folks who were involved in changing SUNW to JAVA. Branding ultimately only has real value it really means what it implies.
Here we go again wth the "OpenSolaris" brand name being abused …

@Roger: You are wrong, and in a bad way. None of the marketing people involved here had anything to do with Java branding. Most of them have done their time in engineering. Their actions here stand and fall on their own merits and your prejudice is the sort of attitude that poisons discussions.

Tim –
This is not a marketing decision, and never was. By declaring something "THE OpenSolaris distribution" (developer, reference, or otherwise), you have established technical precedent for what constitutes "OpenSolaris" because the name demands exclusivity.
Who makes decisions about what goes into the "reference" distribution? What constitutes "compatibility"? Who is responsible for architectural review of components in the "official" distribution?
None of these questions have been answered, nor can they when all there is a prototype. I have no doubt that one day we will end up with a distro that shares the name "OpenSolaris". But that decision needs to be made by the community at large, not by taking a prototype and having a small project team (largely within Sun) decree that it is the one true distro.
There is an open project to examine this exact issue and put it to the vote of the community, but the project leadership ignored all the advice that the community gave them and made a unilateral decision that is obviously not welcome (at this point in time).
Complaining "I don’t get it" just shows how little you understand the architectural, technical, and community ramifications of this decision. All you need to do is *work with the community* instead of whining and ignoring them by "just running with it". Why is that so hard to understand?

No offense, but Sun Microsystems is notorious in the IT industry for having one of the worst marketing departments ever.
With a few notable exceptions at Sun, the marketing folks don’t have a clue. An old e-mail joke says that while marketing folks were busy partying and getting plastered in college, engineers were the the only type that actually studied.
Marketeers don’t understand technology, and in this particular case, the problem is further exacerbated by the fact we’re dealing with some highly specialized and obscure technology (UNIX, Solaris), which makes it even worse. How can the marketing folks sell something they don’t even understand?
I’ve got a close friend who works in marketing. Now, this guy’s pretty smart and even understands quite a bit og technology. But it took me months and months to pound it into his head that the product I want marketed is some niche technology and that I don’t want some mumbo-jumbo buzzword marketing for the masses.
In the past two and a half years, Sun engineers blogging have done more and better advertising than Sun Microsystems marketing dept. in the last 20 years!
Marketing folks just don’t get it. Period.

As a Sun employee and OpenSolaris contributor I’m personally rather embarrassed by the decision that’s been made. The one positive aspect is that blunders in open source projects tend to live long enough in the memory that the community makes damn sure they never happen again!

An element here that’s not been talked about is pace – yes there are technical decisions that need to be made over this, however running with this name *now* would accelerate the making of those decisions.
As if I needed any more examples, here’s a recent one:http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/opensolaris-help/2007-November/006925.html
– question 4 is what we’re up against, we need to get this sorted sooner rather than later.
A fast community decision would be great. A committee to decide on the members of a working group to agree a draft on which to vote a proposal for a decision which some other body has a veto on, which can be then be ratified or not by another body is my fear.
I don’t believe there’s any reason why these decisions can’t be made while a prototype is out there, or would you rather wait (see above, "pace") ?

Tim: I’d rather the prototype change its name now, until the community decides. Isn’t that, after all, the fairer decision? Leaving it in place just lends more momentum to a potentially erroneous decision.

When’s the vote for that decision, and what’s going to be on the ballot paper ? :-)
Until question’s answered then I think it’d be hard for them to know whether spending engineering time changing the name is going to be worthwhile. ( do they change their name for 2 days, and have the community vote "yes" the next day ? )

Tim –
I think it’s entirely ridiculous to say "there are technical decisions to be made" before we can rationally adopt something as a reference distribution, and then come back and say we need to adopt this reference distribution would "accelerate the making of these decisions." You’re basically arguing that we don’t have enough information to make a decision, but that we have to make the decision (in favor of the will of a single project team) to gather information. It just doesn’t make sense, and emphasizes the fact that you don’t understand the real question at hand.
Once you adopt the stance of a reference distribution, it cannot be undone. It is selfish and myopic to adopt such an attitude while ignoring the legitimate concerns of the community. Arguing that the process will take too long and therefore a single project team should be given the right to short circuit the entire community is even worse. Saying that there needs to be an exclusive name in order to make progress also doesn’t hold water – it is an invention to justify a poorly made decision after the fact. And now you invent the new excuse that "we’ve already made the decision," that undoing it would be too difficult, and therefore the project team should get to do whatever it wants in defiance of the community. Simply insulting.